A monthly report on the best in new fiction and non-fiction books. Alan Caruba is a charter member of the National Book Critics Circle and has been reviewing for more than five decades. Bookviews does not review e-books, nor accept galleys, only finished, published books should be sent. To request a review, first email acaruba@aol.com

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Move over
Nostradamus, James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus have looked into their
crystal balls and jointly come up with America
3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century—why America’s
Greatest Days are Yet to Come (25.99, Encounter Books). Over the years I
have read any number of comparable books that have attempted to look into the
future, some more successfully than others—perhaps because change has become so
rapid since the end of World War Two. Anyone with an interest in the broad
outlines of American history and curiosity about how the various national and
international realignments will affect the future will find this book an
interesting, well informed analysis of what may lay ahead. Bennett was
cofounder of two private space transportation companies and other technology
ventures. He has written extensively on technology, culture and society with a
particular emphasis on the Anglosphere, the shared history of English speaking
nations. Lotus has a BA in economics from the University of Chicago and a JD
from Indiana University. He practices law when, like his coauthor, he is not
writing about history and politics. Together, they bring their considerable
knowledge to address whether the U.S. will undertake the reforms it needs to
fix its economy, even suggesting that some of our larger states may divide into
smaller, more manageable ones. Both agree that, at the heart of our nation is
the nuclear family. This is, quite frankly, a book that will challenge your
beliefs and ideas on every page.

When the
Supreme Court rationalized that the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as
Obamacare, was a tax and not legislation in direct conflict with several
elements of the U.S. Constitution, not the least of which is its Commerce
Clause, it set off a firestorm of resistance that we are seeing today. Clark M.
Neily III has authored Terms of
Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited
Government ($23.99, Encounter Books) in which he argues that America’s
judges have abandoned a key feature of the Constitution, its limits on
government. He deems the ACA one of the most blatantly unconstitutional pieces
of legislation since the expansion of federal power during the era of the New
Deal. Neily is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice where he
litigates constitutional cases involving economic liberty, property rights,
free speech and school choice, among others. He makes a powerful case that the
nation is being radically transformed from its founding principles to one where
property rights and economic freedom are in jeopardy as the Supreme Court
routinely protects government prerogatives at the expense of liberty. To
understand what is happening and why, I recommend you read this book.

For anyone
who grew up on the plains of America or still lives there and loves its vistas,
there is a book of photography by David Plowden, Heartland: The Plains and the Prairie ($75.00, W.W. Norton), a
large format collection of black and white photos that will conjure up memories
and provide a lot of pleasure with their stark testimony to the beauty of vast
expanses, long roads, silos and distant farmhouses. While the Midwestern
flatlands cover nearly a quarter of the North American continent, spanning 73
million square miles between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, they are
largely unknown to the bulk of the population that lives on the nation’s
coasts.This is a visual return to the
land that feeds Americans and whose exports feed many others as well. For those
from cities and suburbs, the book evokes the immense distance, the flowing
grasslands, ever distant horizons, and dominating skies of the Midwest. Plowden
has more than twenty photography books to his credit and this one will make a
great Christmas gift for someone who fondly recalls the great plains and
prairie, the heartland.

My late
Mother gained recognition as a teacher of haute cuisine and author of cookbooks,
so food was always a topic of conversation in my home. It is a topic, too, in
magazines, on websites, and continues to generate new cookbooks. If you are a
“foodie” then you will surely enjoy Best
Food Writing 2013 edited by Holly Hughes ($15.99, Da Capo Press,
softcover). Its seven sections, ranging from “A Critical Palate” to “Home
Cooking”, has plenty to enjoy as various trends are explored such as the
growing interest in buying locally grown veggies and fruits.Ms. Hughes has edited this series since its
inception in 2000 and she has produced another winner this year, too.

While on
the topic of food, one of my favorites is cookies. Happily, Luane Kohnke has
written Sassy Cookies: Sweet, Spicy
& Savory Treats with Swagger ($19.95, Pelican Publishing Company). The
author’s wholesale bakery in New York specializes in cookies catering to
corporate clients. Her book provides more than forty original recipes, all of
which are gluten-free. They include Lemony White Chocolate, Chocolate
Shortbread, and Hazelnut Cream Sandwich Cookies. One section is devoted to
cookies that are an accompaniment to soups, salads, and fruit-and-cheese trays.
Suffice to say, in addition to the classics, there are some tasty treats you
will want to try for their originality. If you’re a chocaholic like me, there’s
Chocolate Desserts to Die For! (26.95,
Pelican Publishing Company) by Bev Shaffer that will keep you happily baking
and eating for years to come. Even a novice can master the recipes. How about a
Chocolate Crumb-Crusted Chocolate-Caramel Cheesecake? All I can say is “Yummy.”

There are
two books from Zest Books this month, one or both of which is sure to please
you or someone you know. One is Why?
Answers to Everyday Scientific Questions by Joel Levy ($10.99, softcover) and
the other is How Not to Be a Dick: An
Everyday Etiquette Guide by Maghan Doherty ($16.95) aimed at those aged 18
and up. The former offers answers to common questions that often are not taught
despite years in school or college. It is lots of fun to read as Levy provides
answer to why we don’t eat grass, why trees drop their leaves, why we sleep or
dream, and the classic, why is the sky blue? The latter book will prove quite
helpful in a world filled with people who behave like idiots who cut into line
in front of us or kick the back of our seat at movies. How does one deal with
them? Ms. Doherty offers some straightforward advice on how to deal with
challenging social situations—with roommates, relationships, in the office, etc.—to
the point where you will be prepared. It is a very useful book for a younger
person at a point where they leave the comfort zone of home and go out into the
world and for the older reader who feels ill at ease in social situations.

Reading History

I am happy
to report that Jeffrey Bennett’s latest volume to his “America, the Grand
Illusion” has been published. It is What
God has Joined ($29.95, Kettle Moraine Publishing, softcover) and it joins
previous volumes “Orphans of the Storm”, “From Revolutions to Evil-ution”, “The
Edge of Darkness”, and an “Uncertain Glory.” The special genius of these
volumes and the latest is that they take the actual documents, speeches, and
published records from a specific time period in U.S. history and bring them
together in a way that enables the reader to grasp what people at that time
where thinking, writing, and saying. In the process, these volumes free our
history from the mythologies that have grown up with it to focus directly on
what was occurring. This particular volume takes the reader from just before
the Civil War to its end and the first steps toward reconstruction. Imagine,
for example, being able to read the constitution of the Confederacy? Or the
actual wording of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott case? All the major players
from John Brown to Stephen Douglas to Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis,
among a large cast, are represented here. Anyone who loves reading history as
much as I do knows the value of these volumes. They are priceless.

I have
lost count of how many Illinois governors have ended up in jail, but the latest one is
Rod Blagojevich and the story of his rise and fall is captured in Only in Chicago: How the Rod Blagojevich
Scandal Engulfed Illinois and Enthralled the Nation by Natasha Korecki
($16.00, Agate Publishing, softcover). Ms. Korecki had a front-row seat for the
trial of Blogo and before him, George Ryan. She is a reporter for the Chicago
Sun-Times. In December 2008, Gov. Blagojevich was arrested on federal
corruption charges that ignited a political firestorm that reverberated all the
way to the White House when he was charged with attempting to sell
then-President-Elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat. As a courts reporter,
the author began to write “The Blago Blog” and this book reflects all the many
twists and turns the case followed.

New Mexico: A History by Joseph P. Sanchez, Robert L. Spude
and Art Gomez ($26.95, University of Oklahoma Press) marks the first complete
history of this state in more than thirty years. It will greatly please anyone
who was born there or lives there today, but also anyone interested in a state
that preceded its U.S. history as a place of Spanish exploration and
settlement. From well before the founding and after New Mexico was known for
the Camino Real, the Santa Fe Trail, and for the railroads and famed Route 66
provided access. It was admitted to the Union in 1912 but modernization began
in earnest after World War Two. Its history makes for a rich reading
experience.

Have you
ever wondered where the punctuation marks we take for granted came from? Keith
Houston has written Shady Characters
($25.95, W.W. Norton) to provide a fascinating glimpses into the tumultuous
history of some of our most familiar, but little understood, punctuation marks.
It spans ancient history to today as it marries a history of typography with
cultural criticism and social history as he tracks the evolution of eleven punctuation
marks from the interrobang (?) to the asterisk (*) and the others our mind
processes as we enjoy whatever we’re reading. Along the way you will learn how
punctuation is intimately bound up with religion, technology, culture and the
desire to accurately represent one’s self on paper or these days, on computer
screens. For those who delve deeply into literature, a book originally
published more than sixty years ago, Robert Graves’s The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth ($18.00, Farrar,
Straus, Giroux, softcover) has been reissued. It reflects Graves’s vast reading
and curious research into the territories of folklore, mythology, religion and
magic. It is, simply said, the work of a poet-scholar and, if you find such
matters of interest, you will welcome this new edition.

The Lives of Real People

Paul
Johnson is one of the greatest living historians and has written biographies of
Napoleon, Churchill, and Darwin. Now he has given us an illuminating, concise
biography of Mozart: A Life ($25.95,
Viking) that everyone who loves his music will want to read along with others
who find the history of music of interest. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of
the most prolific and influential composers of all time, winning new fans with
each new generation. His compositional output was prodigious, but you may not
know that he had such a gift that he mastered all the instruments except the
harp. When the clarinet was invented he learned to play it as well and added it
to his arrangements. Many myths have grown up around Mozart and Johnson
challenges many of them including those about his health, wealth, religion and
relationships to his family. He debunks the popular myth that he was a tortured
soul who died in poverty. As always, the truth is more interesting than the
fiction.

Norman
Rockwell is arguably the best known artist and illustrator in America. Now
there’s a biography, American Mirror:
The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell ($28.00, Farrar Straus Giroux). For
four decades his paintings were on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post, one
of the most popular magazines of its time. His images of small-time America
evoked an earlier era, but one many senior citizens can still recall. They
symbolized the culture and values of the nation. He died in 1978and now Deborah Solomon, a long-time New York
Times interviewer, art critic and biographer of Jackson Pollock and Joseph
Carnell, has written a biography that is both thorough and surprising as it
reveals an obsessed man who may have repressed his true sexuality throughout
his life. His strongest relationships were with men despite marriage and a
family. A decade in the making this biography is a triumph of research and
attention to detail.

Pinkerton’s Great Detective: The
Amazing Life and Times of James McParland by Beau Riffenburgh ($32.95, Viking) marks the first
biography of a man who was a legend in his time after he had infiltrated the
Molly Maguires, a brutal Irish-American brotherhood responsible for sabotage
and at least 16 murders in the Pennsylvania coalfields. His two-year effort
resulted in 19 trials and that was just the beginning of his career. He led the
und for Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch and was so well known at one point
that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invented a meeting between him and the fictional
Sherlock Holmes. In time he became known as “The Great Detective” and the
biography is filled with stories of outlaws and criminals, detectives and
lawmen, based on the archives of the celebrated secretive agency and its premier
sleuth.

Princesses Behaving Badly: Real
Stories from History Without the Fairy-Tale Endings by Linda Rodrigues McRobbie ($19.95,
Quirk Books) is lively reading for anyone who enjoys history divested of the
mythology that so often accompanies it. Little girls may dream of being
princesses and others may follow the lives of modern day princesses such as
Lady Diana, Grace Kelly, and now Kate Middleton, history provides many real
princesses, whether royal by birth or marriage, who fought, stole, schemed, and
partied as they made their way through a complicated world in which they were
often chattel in arranged marriages whose job was to produce royal offspring.
From Olga of Kiev (ca. 890-969) who avenged her husband’s death by slaughtering
almost the entire Derevlian kingdom to Stephanie von Hohenlohe (1891-1972) who
charmed her way into the heart (and out of the prisons) of both the Nazi Party
and Lyndon B. Johnson, the ladies in this book offer a lot of entertaining and
interesting reading.

Getting Down to Business
Books

Someone
ought to send the White House a copy of Michael Wheeler’s The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World ($26.00,
Simon and Schuster). There has been no dearth of books on how to negotiate and
they fall into the “win-win” method and the hard bargaining style. Wheeler, an
award-winning Harvard Business School professor offers a third option. As he
points out, “Negotiation can’t be scripted. Yet as negotiators we have to
persist even when information is ambiguous, boundaries are hazy, and the scene
is constantly changing.” He notes that master negotiators regard the challenge
as one of learning, adapting, and, of course, influencing. His book offers an
improvisational approach and shows how many different fields of endeavor use
the techniques he recommends. Having taught the art of negotiation to thousands
of MBA students, executives, managers, and public officials, his book now
provides the reader the lessons they have enjoyed.

I once had
a teacher who said that “Nothing ever happens until someone sells something to
someone else.”If your livelihood
depends on sales than you just might want to pick up a copy of Unlimited Sales Success: 12 Simple Steps
for Selling More Than You Ever Thought Possible by Brian and Michael Tracy
($22.95, Amacom). Brian has trained thousands of people and still found time to
write 55 books that have been translated into 38 languages. Michael is the vice
president of sales and business development at Analog Analytics, a software company
that was acquired by Barclays Plc in 2012. For either the novice or the person
who has been in sales a while, the book provides advice on how to spot and
avoid a poor prospect, how to turn indifferent customers into buyers, and lots
of other tips that improve one’s prospects.

The BossHole Effect: Three Simple
Steps Anyone Can Follow to Become a Great Boss and Lead a Successful Team ($16.99, Mill City Press, softcover)
by Dr. Greg L. Alston is a short, easy to read book on how to become a
respected, effective leader. He defines a BossHole as someone who behaves like
an imbecile but has the authority to impact others’ lives. Dr. Alston has
worked extensively in the chain drug and healthcare industries, supervising
thousands of employees, working for hundreds of bosses, and “thwarting
BossHoles at every turn.” He is currently both Associate Professor of Pharmacy
Management and Assistant Dean for Assessment at Wingate University School of
Pharmacy in North Carolina. Suffice to say he brings a lot of experience to
this guide that offers a step-by-step strategy by which readers can become
great bosses with minimum struggle and maximum success. We all encounter
BossHoles in our careers and this book will teach you how to effectively deal
with them.

For a quick
laugh, there’s Your Guide to Spotting
and Outing Bloodsuckers at Work: A Little Book of Monstrous Puns by Rita
Harris and Heather Harwood ($17.99, Authorhouse, softcover). Working off the
vampire theme, these two come up with a variety of puns that, for example, turn
a chef into Count Spatula. Don’t say you weren’t warned! It would make a cute
gift for anyone suffering a horrid boss or co-workers.

Advice, Advice, Advice

I wish I
had read more books of advice when I was younger. Fortunately I had parents
that offered a lot of good advice, but as often as not one needs to learn from
others and, if they have demonstrated they expertise, their books are often a
very good investment.

As a
semi-retired senior citizen, I wish that Failure
is NOT an Option: Creating Certainty in the Uncertainty of Retirement ($14.95,
Incubation Press, Bend, Oregon, softcover) had been around when I was
younger.Written by David Rosell has
extensive credentials as a financial planner and, as ten thousand “baby
boomers” are reaching retirement age every day, many discover they are not
ready and not able to stop working and enjoy their senior years. If you or
someone you know are approaching the age of retirement, this book will prove an
invaluable source of financial survival tips about the eight fundamental risks
every retiree faces, providing strategies to avoid mistakes and turn existing
adversity around. This book is not the usual advice about just putting money
away for retirement. It goes well beyond that. The book comes with a rousing
endorsement by Charles R. Schwab, Jr.

There’s
plenty of advice for couples on how to resolve conflicts in marriage and we
know that half of all marriages these days end in divorce despite the high
hopes when the knot is tied. He Wins,
She Wins: Learning the Art of Marital Negotiation by Dr. Willard F. Harley,
Jr. ($19.99. Revell), a clinical psychologist, marriage counselor, and author,
has as its ultimate goal recommendations that will help couples grow in their
love for one another. At one point he advises, “Never do anything without the
enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse.” Is that possible? It is if
they address the way emotional reactions often prevent calm discussion or
neither of you want to talk about an issue. There’s a problem, too, if you or
both are indecisive. His previous book, “His Needs, Her Needs” sold more than
two million copies, so you can be confident that this one contains advice that
will help overcome the problems that every married couple encounters.

I confess
I have always had a problem with trust. I suspect a lot of other do too. That’s
why I think Ellen Castro’s book, Spirited
Leadership: 52 Ways to Build Trust ($14.95, Langdon Street Press,
softcover) will likely be very helpful to anyone with a similar outlook. She
earned her Med from Harvard and an MBA from Southern Methodist University where
she served on the faculty of The Business Leadership Center. She is, in fact,
an example of the advice she offers, learning it through experience and then
translating it into practical, uplifting, concise, “how-to” exercises that
benefit those who are successful and inspiring hope in those who feel hopeless.
It is a book about emotional intelligence, social skills, and people smarts.
These are essential skills if one is to travel through life courageously.

When Life Hurts: Finding Hope and
Healing from the Pain Your Carry
by Jimmy Evans with Frank Martin ($21.99, Baker Books) will no doubt prove
helpful to those who carry the hurt that comes with divorce, abuse, illness or
the loss of a loved one, among other forms of emotional pain. Evans is the
cofounder with his wife, Karen, of Marriage Today, a television ministry, and
together they have authored a number of books on marriage and family. No
stranger to emotional pain, Evans shares his own life experiences and, as one
might expect, incorporates faith in God to deal with deep-seated wounds. The
book is enhanced by the skills of Martin who has collaborated with others
including Dr. Robert Schuller and has been a family commentary writer for Focus
on the Family for the past fifteen years.

School Skills

I used to
hate taking tests in school. It was more an attitude than lack of preparedness,
but nowadays the entire educational system from coast to coast has been taken
over by standardized tests—a very bad idea since any teacher will tell you that
students learn at their individual rate, mastering different subjects as
individuals, not as a bunch of robots in a classroom. That’s why two books by
Elie Venezky, available from www.prestigeprep.com, are worth checking out; Test PrepSanity, a guide for parents, and Test Prep Sanity for Students ($13.46 paperback, $9.99 Kindle). Both
have a track record of success based on the author’s 14 years of helping
students prepare for tests and 20 years working with teenagers. Love’m or
hate’m, youngsters have to take tests so any parent that takes the time to
learn how to help and any student who learns how to take tests is going to be
at a definite advantage.

Getting
into the college of one’s choice is another challenge and How to Prepare a Standout College Application by Alison Cooper
Chisolm and Anna Ivey ($16.95, Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley, softcover)
offers advice based on the author’s experience as college admissions
professionals who now work together at Ivey College Consulting, based in
Cambridge, MA. A book like this can make all the difference between acceptance
or rejection. In a fiercely competitive world, this is often the first step.

Woof, Woof!

There are
dog people and cat people. For the former, there are a number of recent books
they are likely to enjoy, starting with Mama
& Boris: How a Sister’s Love Saved a Fallen Soldier’s Beloved Dogs ($19.99,
Reader’s Digest). Written by Carey Neesley with Michael Levin, Carey was very
close with her brother, Peter, and naturally she worried about him when he was
sent to Iraq as part of his Army service. In weekly calls, Peter told her of
adopting a stray dog and her pups. When three of them died, Peter became
committed to saving the remaining two, Mama and Boris. However, on Christmas
Day, Peter was killed. Carey wanted to honor his memory by bringing the dogs
home to Michigan. Not the easiest task since they were halfway around the
world, but she was assisted by a network of heroes.This is a wonderful story.

According
to HelpGuide.org, pets can detect and affect their owner’s mood, blood
pressure, and overall health. Many have become therapy dogs, visiting hospitals
to lift the spirits of those recovering from illness, particularly children.
They also visit nursing homes. Kathryn Walter has written a novella, Babbette’s Pack ($26.99, Xlibris.com)
based on true medical cases and featuring her Shih Tzu named Babette as the
heroine, a dog that can detect fictionalized, but actual canine skills to
predict seizures, low blood surge, and other events. “I was inspired,” said
Walter, “to write this book from my time as a physician’s assistant and RN.” Sushi: The Lhaso Apso—A Love Story ($14.95,
softcover) is the story of how a little dog gained the love of one family and
the legacy she eventually left behind. Claudia and Paul Elhoff tell the story
of how Sushi became a part of their lives and how she bravely battled recurring
cancer. Readers who have gone through the pain of losing a pet to illness or
old age will especially relate to this heart-warming story.

For some
laughter and fun, there’s Throw the Damn
Ball: Classic Poetry by Dogs ($15.00, a Plume original) that purports to be
an anthology of poetry written by dogs and “edited” by R. D. Rosen, Harry Pritchett, and Rob Battles. These are poems about
things that really matter to dogs, love, loss, sex, friendship, meals, and
bodily functions. These three have collaborated on bestsellers, “Bad Dog”, “Bad
Cat”, and “Bad President.”While dogs
may be man’s best friend, the “poets” do not ignore their owner’s faults and
frailties. There are 112 poems in this book which should be on your gift list
for anyone who has a dog. It is hilarious.

Kid Stuff

For the
kid who’s age 7 to 9, there is a very unique book, The Bee Society, ($15.95, The Bee Society Press, LLC) that the
author would have you believe was written by Georgie Bee, a honey bee who has
taken it upon himself to explain the life of bees to humans. He is quite chatty
and charming, and the book is extensively illustrated with both artwork and
photos, but it is the text that provides both entertainment and information
about, well, bees.

From
Tanglewood Publishing come two novels that pre-teens, 8 to 12, will enjoy. This
first is The Last Enchanter: The
Celestine Chronicles—Book Two by Laurisa White Reyes ($16.96). Book one,
“The Rock of Ivanore”, was a bestseller, but now it has been months since
Marcus and Kelvin succeeded in their quest to find it. Kelvin is living as
royalty in Dokur and Marcus is studying magic with Zyll. Then Fredric is
murdered and Kelvin becomes king, it is evident that neither is safe. This is a
wonderfully written sequel, filled with action, magic, and adventure. The Deepest Blue by Kim Williams
Justesen ($15.99) explores the problems when a teen finds himself at the center
of a struggle when his birth mom wants custody even though there has been no
contact for five years, Mike the young teen has been living with his father
whose girlfriend has been like a mother to him. Mike has to take on the legal
system despite the fact that he has no legal rights in cases of death or
divorce. For those 12 and older, this is a deeply moving story.

Novels, Novels, Novels

There are
so many novels being published every month that it’s nice to know that one can
become reacquainted with authors we may have missed out on reading earlier. For
example, Kurt Vonnegut, best known for “Slaughterhouse Five”, was around awhile
and evolving as a writer. We Are What We
Pretend to Be ($12.99, Da Capo Press, softcover) is a collection of his
first and last unpublished works with an introduction written by his daughter,
Nanette. We see his budding talent in “Basic Training” as well as his last,
unfinished novel, “If God Were Alive Today.”The two stories are bookends to his life. Similarly, David Mamet is
famed as a stage and film director as well as a playwright, notably for
“Glengarry Glen Ross” and “The Verdict.”Three novellas have been gathered into a book, Three War Stories, by Mamet and self-published by Argo Navis Author
Services. One assumes it is available via Amazon and other outlets. Suffice to
say Mamet is a great talent and his book is more proof of that.

I enjoyed
James Phoenix’s previous novel, “Frame Up”, the first in the Fenway Burke
Mystery Series, so I was pleased to receive Loose Ends ($27.95, White Cap Publishing, Weymouth, MA) and not
surprised to hear he had inherited the fans of Robert B. Parker as well as
Raymond Chandler. He’s that good. Unlike most detective heroes, Burke is
happily married and even a feminist. It’s a combination of old and new
detective genre as we greet Burke again aboard his floating home in Marblehead,
Massachusetts, his wife, baby daughter, and two enormous English Mastiffs,
really big dogs. Burke is introduced to a man in his 90s, Morris Gold, a
legendary money man for the mob. His grandson’s wife has disappeared without a
trace, but he doesn’t want the police involved. When he takes on the case, it
has a lot of loose ends and the chase takes him to New York City, then
Venezuela and Columbia. Getting her home is going to require all his skills and
courage. Fortunately, he has plenty to spare.

The other
novels this month are all softcovers and I will wander through the stack with
no particular direction in mind. Laura Spinella returns with Perfect Timing ($15.00, Berkley Publishing).
It is a romance in which Isabel Lang, a young woman, has moved from New Jersey
to Alabama where she forms an unlikely friendship with the musically gifted
Aidan Roycroft. They share everything from a first kiss to family secrets, but
a tragedy at the town’s time-honored gala causes them to flee to Las Vegas.
Seven years later, Aiden is now a famed rock star and Isabel is working at a
radio station. I won’t tell you more in order to avoid spoiling the story. The Secrets She Carried marks the debut
of Barbara Davis ($15.00, New American Library) and a very good one as she
invites us along with Leslie Nichols, the main character, to a discovery of a
family’s long-buried past. Leslie does not have happy memories of Peak
Plantation, the scene of an unhappy childhood that included her mother’s death
and her father’s disgrace. When her grandmother, Maggie, dies, Leslie isn’t the
only one who was left with the property. Jay Davenport, its caretaker, has a
claim to it as well and Maggie has told Jay a terrible secret. Leslie and Jay
will uncover the kind of secret that transforms one’s life forever.

I hear
from book publicists all the time. It’s one thing to write a novel, but it
takes real know-how to promote one. Christina George is a book industry insider
and has written a series called “The Publicist” in which the second novel, Shelf Life, is just off the presses ($8.00,
via Amazon.com). Publishing is filled with people who have huge egos, often
unrealistic expectations, and some who write books whose shelf life can be
measured in days. Kate Mitchell is the publicist and trouble arrives when one
of her star authors is led away in handcuffs. At about the same time her career
and love affair hit the “off” button. She had to rebuild her life and, as fate
would have it, her name becomes synonymous with a huge bestseller. This is what
is often called “chick lit” because the girls will really enjoy it more than
the guys. Also in the genre is Love
Waltzes In by Alana
Albertson ($9.99, Bolero Books) which has an uncanny resemblance to Dancing
With the Stars, he popular television show. In her novel, Ms. Albertson, a
former competitive ballroom dancer, pulls back the curtain to expose the sex,
lies and secrets that remain hidden behind the glitzy costumes and fast moves
in this, her debut as a novelist. The book has already won a number of awards
and as you follow Selena Marcil, the star of a hit show, Dancing Under the
Stars, you will be drawn into her life and quest for love. Chick lit, yes, but
a good read too.

For a
change of pace, there’s Caught in the
Current by Daniel Hryhorezuk ($15.95, Langdon Street Press) that takes the
ready back to the summer of 1970 in the Soviet controlled Ukraine. A first
generation Ukrainian-American is on a break from his college studies, having
organized a European tour with a group of friends. Unbeknownst to the group,
Alec has agreed to gather information for the Ukrainian Youth Organization that
seeks to undermine Soviet rule. This is a coming of age novel like no other
because we are now grown distant from what life was like in the Soviet Union, a
complete dictatorship. The novel is semi-autobiographical and well worth
reading for its insights and drama. A foreign nation is the backdrop for
another novel is the Philippines in Gina Apostol’s Gun Dealer’s Daughter ($14.95, W.W. Norton). It is her third novel
and her U.S. debut with a lush, dizzying depiction of wealth, corruption, and
rebellion in the 1970s. As she idles away the years in a decrepit mansion
overlooking the Hudson River, Solidad Soliman is the narrator as she
obsessively relives a brief, but traumatic episode from her adolescences. She
was born into privilege in the Marcos-era Philippines, but never questioned the
true source of her family’s wealh until she enrolls in university in Manila.
There she joins a rebellious Maoist student group and becomes infatuated with
Jed, a fellow rich kid. Solidad must come to terms with the fact that her
father is an arms dealer whose weapons prop up the nation’s tyrannical regime.
The novel captures the issues, the pretenses of all involved, and the turbulent
time in which it is set.

That’s
it for November! Come back in December and start making your gift list of
special books for special family and friends. Meanwhile, tell others who love
to read about Bookviews.